Gamera

When I use the term Paul, I mean the contructed author of various works (probably written by various people). Authorship is always a construct, so it doesn't matter to me if Paul never existed, or if there were many "Pauls."

As to intent, again it is a contruct of the text itself. I don't care what the author's "intent' is, if you mean some purpose in his head. I don't have his head. I have a text, and out of it I construct intent through a hermeneutical process. I have no illusion that what I mean by intent means anything beyond the text itself (but then I would argue that's what we really mean by intent when dealing with discourse in any case, as opposed to dealing with persons sitting across from us).

mountainman

Thanks for this explication Gamera.

To me this sounds like the position of a pure textual critic who is restricting all commentary and analysis to the internal issues of the text, and thus totally disregarding any external issues related to the text.


Interpreting the New Testament documents

Also in this same article, is an extended outline of the tole of Textual critics reserved for the Internal History of the Text (which is where I see you position, and most mainstreamers, to be).

The emotional baggage to which I was referring tends to treat the internal analysis as the primary analysis in the nieve assumption that we are dealing with some form of "revealed truth", but which when examined from the external analysis (see above), may in fact turn out to be a profane forgery.

What is the use of the textual criticism of a forgery?

As a person who seeks explication of the external history of the texts, I like to think of the author (or series of authors, interpolators or forgers) as human beings trapped by their actions in the political environent of their time, who had political and personal and also perhaps some "spiritual" motivations to author the texts that we have in front of us.

The political environment of the time of authorship is paramount IMO. This cannot always be drawn from a text, since we do not know if the author is faithfully representing the historical facts, or whether the author is engaged in the fraudulent misrepresentation of the historical facts.

That mainstream New Testament studies refuses to countenance fiction is an indication of an emotional attachment to the subject matter. I can understand te reasons for this emotional attachment, but it does not alter the fact that such a position is clearly not an objective one.



Best wishes,



Pete Brown

andrewcriddle

What may be relevant is that Origen in Homilies on Jeremiah XIX and XX (John Clark Smith translation) in commenting on Jeremiah 20:7 Develops a doctrine of God deceiving us for our own Good.

(I'm running out of time on this computer will post later.)

Andrew Criddle

ETA

Homily XIX section 15 Homily XX section 3 These controversial ideas of Origen do seem IMO to be the background of what Eusebius is saying in the Praeparatio. He is thinking of how God acts towards us not of how we should ourselves normally behave.

mountainman

Well if anyone in antiquity is to be held up as someone who knows and thinks about how God acts towards us, Eusebius - whom Momigliano considered to be possibly of Jewish descent - is your man.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown